7.5.4.1 DESCRIPTION AND MISSION There are several ways that new cancer therapeutics can be optimized. Drug scheduling and pharmacokinetic issues clearly relate to outcome. For example* dose-dense scheduling provides superior outcomes in breast cancer adjuvant therapy. Drug metabolism and inadequate drug levels, as has been suggested for tamoxifen, may also adversely affect outcome. Understanding and identifying sources of variability in responsiveness to anti-cancer drug therapy is a significant challenge to clinical investigators. The source of variability may not be obvious and thus, techniques to help identify, explain and evaluate the variability are needed to assure proper interpretation of clinical trial results. The developing Clihical Pharmacology Shared Resource will provide to Cancer Center members: consultion services to assist in the design, conduct and data interpretation of pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamic and pharmacogenetjc studies* analytical services for development of drug assays and drug quantification of study specimens, sample acquisition services to assist in obtaining, processing and storage of samples for local and multi-center pharmacology studies.